Yes...I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, but damn it! You had better at least help with the dishes!

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Shhhhh Don’t tell the others….

I was watching the video Ann Imig did for Listen to Your
Mother and was suddenly reminded about the “validation” we lack as mothers. I
wish I’d have written more way back in the day when I was new at this but as I
have heard so many moms say, I just did not feel comfortable in my own skin
yet. I did not feel safe or that I was doing the right things in my journey of
motherhood. I felt for sure I was doing some major permanent damage to these
babes. Ha, little did I know -9 years later- that clearly the damage has been
done to ME!

Permanently disfigured, serious loss of brain function,
limited memory skills, and endless exhaustion is what I am left with. Jaded,
bloated, and frumpish (yup I made that word up.) And I have to ask… Why do none of the others
tell us, WARN us that this would happen?They know (I think)? I will give them this small leeway that there is in
my opinion a slight bit of Mom-nesia going on here but the rest? Well that is
just blatant lack of disclosure.

From the start- “Hey, I wanted to warn you that since this
is your first pregnancy, one afternoon very soon you will be out walking across
a parking lot and will be unable to take one more step as your hips will
actually dislocate and begin to spread so that the babies head will be able to
fit through. And by the way it will hurt like a mother fucker but don’t worry,
it’s totally normal.” Ummm okay? Or how about this… “Yes, well I wanted to give
you a heads up, people will tell you that you are glowing and that pregnancy
will make you radiate beauty, but in fact you will be bloated, swollen,
completely off your meds bat shit crazy with hormone flux. You will fart like a
fat bean burrito eating dog. You will have horrific acid reflux, nightmares
that’d scare a vampire, and will get no sleep because you will feel so
uncomfortable all the time you want to chew off your arms.” Do they tell you
that stuff? No! Oh yeah! How about that if you don’t do some major work on
stretching out your vaginal opening that you will most likely tear from the head
coming out, or that you will probably poop all over the table as you are
birthing? Little sweet factoids like these are politely left out and why I
ask??

This is only where the lies begin. They seem never ending to
me. Lies lies lies… “Oh my kids never watch TV.”“We don’t cuss in our home EVER.” “My laundry
is always done.” “I get along so well with my in-laws.” “My child was
completely potty trained at age 2.”All
lies designed to make us feel as if we are keeping up with the Jones’s but in
fact we are all lying about just how impossibly hard it is to get it all done.
“These cookies are baked from scratch.” “I hand sewed her communion gown.” “I
made all the party invitations myself.”

Like we just want to make it all seem so perfect so that
when we recruit some other poor sap into motherhood we can somehow feel
secretly better knowing that she is now a part of the quiet suffering too.

Well I’m going rogue ladies. Here’s what’s up. From now on
when a mommy says to me, “Oh I don’t know how you do it all?” I’m going to tell
her this- Xanax is your friend- quick get some. Then that my laundry is piled
to the ceiling. That at least once a week I will open the washer to the sour
smell of clothes left in there for a few days. That I scream at my kids until
my throat hurts, my bathtub needs scrubbing, my landscaping is non-existent. My
“craft table” should be called my “crap table” as it’s piled with junk from
unfinished art projects and class party leftovers. I shave my legs only once
every two weeks and that “made from scratch” in my house means I took a box of
something and added a few extra ingredients that the label did not call for.